fe, douce, honest woman, used to
observe. His dress was a little in the Pagan style, and rendered him
kenspeckle to the eye of observation. Instead of a hat, he generally
wore a long red Kilmarnock nightcap, with a cherry on the top of it,
through foul weather and fair; and having a kind of trot in his walk,
from a bink forward in his knees, it dang-dangled behind him, like the
cap of Mr Merry-man with the painted face, the showfolk's fool. On the
afternoon alluded to, he was in full killing-dress, having on an auld
blue short coatie, once long, but now docked in the tails, so that the
pocket-flaps and hainch buttons were not above three inches from the
place where his wife had snibbed it across by; and, from long use in his
blood-thirsty occupation, his sleeves flashed in the daylight as if they
had been double japanned. Tied round his beer-barrel-like waist was a
stripped apron, blue and white; and at his left side hung a bloody gaping
leather pouch, as if he had been an Israelite returned from the slaughter
of the Philistines, filled with steels and knives, straight and crooked,
that had done ample execution in their day I'll warrant them. Up his
thighs were rolled his coarse rig-and-fur stockings, as if it were to
gird him for the battle, and his feet were slipped into a pair of
bauchles--that is, the under part of auld boots cut from the legs. As to
his face, lo, and behold! the moon shining in the Nor-west--yea, the sun
blazing in his glory--had not a more crimson aspect than Reuben. Like
the pig-eyed Chinese folk on tea-cups, his peepers were diminutive and
twinkling; but his nose made up for them--and that it did--being portly
in all its dimensions broad and long, as to colour, liker a radish than
any other production in nature. In short, he was as bonny a figure as
ever man of woman born clapped eye on; and was cleaving away most
devoutly, at a side of black-faced mutton, when the woman, as I said
before, cried out, "Hollo! you man, do ye ken onything about that?"
pointing to the dumb animal that crawled and crouched behind her.

"Aweel, what o't?" cried Cursecowl, still hacking and cleaving away at
the meat.

"What o't? i' faith, billy, that's a gude ane," answered the wife. "But
ye'll no get aff that way; catch me, my man. My name's no Jenny
Mathieson an I haena ye afore your betters. I'll learn ye what
soommenses are."

Looking at her with a look of lightning for a couple of seconds--"Aff wi'
y